1 Million Recycled Xbox Gamertags are Being Made Available

When the original Xbox first made its debut in the console race in 2001, it was the beginning of a new era in video games. Its Xbox Live system, pioneered by Microsoft, opened the gates for a new way to play with your friends, not just on the same system, but around the world. Now, over a million recycled original Xbox gamertags will be made available on May 18, according to Microsoft.

According to the original post on Major Nelson’s website, these tags are Xbox gamertags that did not make the jump from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360, and have laid abandoned for some time. With that in mind, Microsoft has decided to allow those old accounts to be released to Xbox Live Gold members with at least a year of Xbox time and an active subscription.

Microsoft did the same thing back in 2011, near the end of the Xbox 360’s run. Now, with the Xbox One firmly established, they’re giving more players the opportunity to grab a new gamertag, if they feel inclined to.

Normally in order to change your gamertag on the Xbox you have to pay 10 dollars, but if this is your first time changing it you can do it for free.

The tags will be released over a 24-hour period, so there’s plenty of time to get one if you want to grab a second Xbox Live account to use. While Microsoft can’t yet tell us what the tags will be, they do all fit into the following categories:

Proper Names
Pop culture references (Entertainment, sports, gaming)
Types of Food
Geography and Travel
Science and Technology
Math and Numbers
Animals
Some of the greatest inventions of all time

One can only wonder what all’s in those million gamertags, but we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out. Hopefully we’ll be lucky and none of them will include edgy words or anything involving the phrases “420”, “weed”, or anything else like that.